


Tales from my Father

by Pookaseraph



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Dimension Z, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Gen, Zola is an asshole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve spends a moment relaxing with his son in Dimension Z.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tales from my Father

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through Captain America (vol. 7) #4; spoilers for the Fear Itself storyline.
> 
> I love you Ian!!

'They grow up so fast.'

It was one of those adages that lived forever in the backs of the minds of parents only to be brought up at first words, first steps, first teeth, or first days of school; it was a cliche, but as Steve watched his son, crowded in a sea of his Phrox clanmates as they cheered him on for his first successful hunt, Steve couldn't help but think exactly that: 'They grow up so fast'.

The normalcy of it was more calming than Steve could put into words, even though 'normal' seemed the last word most would describe Steve's current life. He was stranded in another dimension where even up and down occasionally lost their meaning, where day and night changed constantly, with twin suns and dozens of moons, and with creatures ready to come out of the ground and eat you if you dared to step on the grass; 'normal' was the last thing to describe it. But there was Ian, the boy that Steve had saved in a drugged up haze the day he'd been kidnapped by Zola, the boy he'd trekked through the wilderness with for at least a year before the two of them found years-long solace with the Phrox.

They were a sea of red skin and red-brown armor plates around Ian, celebrating that they would eat, but Ian's eyes sought Steve's, and when Steve caught them he gave his son a soft smile and a barely there nod. Ian answered with a wide, toothy grin. That night the two of them curled together eating the lizard he and Ian had taken down together.

"I'm proud of you." Steve gave voice to all of the soft words that were harder to say when the world was so harsh.

"You're just worried I'm catching up with you, Pop," Ian answered, always sarcastic, but with a deep truth to it. Steve wondered how Ian had learned that sarcasm, and yet it seemed as natural as breathing as he grew older. "I'll have the throw down before you know it."

Steve laughed and flung his arm over Ian's shoulder, tugging him close and kissing his son's temple, intentionally scratching his beard there so Ian would laugh and mock-struggle back. He didn't know exactly how long he had been here - the days passed and Steve counted them, and he was able to add them one to another to total something more than ten years - but the thing that kept Steve from losing all hope and giving into the despair his long absence from Earth gave him was his son, was Ian.

The two of them went back to their silent meal, chewing softly, savoring the smoked flavor of the lizard meat that was almost unpalatable to Steve years ago but now he found he almost enjoyed.

"... Tell me a story, Dad," Ian said, voice soft.

The requests for stories were less frequent anymore, Steve didn't know if that was a natural consequence of Ian's age or something deep in his son's mind that shied away from tales of Steve's home, but the request warmed Steve, and he jostled a shoulder against Ian's in response.

Steve glanced over to one of the many murals on the walled off area of the Phrox Cavern that he and Ian made their home. The Avengers, or a subset of them, were painted there Spider-man and Hawkeye, Captain Marvel and Iron Man, Thor and Hulk; there were more paintings like it over every wall, a few different scenes of memorable battles over the years that time had blurred the edges of, even in Steve's mind. "Before you were born..." Steve cleared his throat. "This was after the fall of Asgard to Earth..."

"After the Goblin?" Ian asked, voice excited as he tried to catalog where, exactly, Steve's stories fell in the complicated mess of tales that Steve had woven for Ian over his lifetime.

"Yes." Steve put out an arm and Ian curled under it a moment later. "The Red Skull... he had a daughter, Sinthea, but she called herself 'Sin'."

"Was she evil?"

"She..." Steve realized, only in that moment, exactly what he had walked into. He'd picked the story of Asgard and Osborn, years ago, as a story about standing up for what was right against tyranny; the followup, though, with Sin and her swath of destruction born from jealousy and hate and a deep insecurity from her father, had another issue to it. "She was raised to believe she had no other choice."

"But she's Red Skull's daughter," Ian protested. "She's gonna be bad."

Inside his skull, Arnim Zola's voice laughed - ' _Yes, tell him he will be his father's monster_ '. Steve screwed his eyes shut before rubbing a hand against his temple, pushing away Zola's voice that niggled constantly in the back of his mind. "No. Well... Ian, so many people let their circumstances, where they come from, define them and make them into something hard or cold or uncaring. Sin has done evil... but that is _not_ because of who her father was, but because she was raised to believe that was right."

Ian seemed set to grumble, his mouth set at a hard angle.

"We still fight her, Ian, but we also have to fight to be better than our circumstances." Steve was doing this all wrong, he knew. His mother would have had better words for this. "My father was not always a kind man, but... I hope I have been a better father to you than that."

"You'd be better at it if you actually told a story," Ian groused, but he looked up at Steve and smirked.

Steve answered his son with a grin of his own and then Ian flung his arms around Steve's neck and they both laughed again. "Alright, alright, a story. Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, is not the only magic hammer from the stars that has ever come to Earth..."

He wove his story, and Ian finally ended up in rapt attention rather than constantly peppering Steve with questions, listening to the tales of Sin finding the Hammer of Skadi, breaking the seal that Odin had placed on his brother, Cul, and unleashing the Serpent and summoning the enchanted hammers of the Worthy. It was hard, really, to remember for Steve, not because it was so long ago, but because Steve remembered what it was like to feel as though they had given up hope and everything was falling apart.

"The Serpent fed on fear and dispair, toppled hope..."

"Not for you," Ian interrupted for the first time since the story had begun in earnest.

Steve hugged his son to his side and pressed a hard kiss to his forehead. "Me too. The important thing is that even when you lose hope, you fight for it again." He _had_ given up hope, at least for moments... he'd called for the Avengers to retreat, and... "While I was fighting for New York, Bucky... he and Black Widow and the Falcon were in Washington, the Capital, fighting against Sin. She brought the Hammer of Skadi down, right through his chest."

"But... Bucky can't die. He went through the whole War and the ice and the Winter Soldier... Bucky can't die." Ian, intentionally or not, had always empathized with Bucky, and Steve knew he sometimes encouraged it and sometimes discouraged it, even though Bucky had pulled away from the worst of his demons after Steve's death. Steve knew that. "He just has to get better. He got better last time."

Even in Dimension Z, the power of denial could be strong. Steve sighed and ruffled his son's hair. "Wait 'til the end." This time, at least, Steve would be able to assure his son that yes, Bucky had not really died, but there had been many a time when he couldn't give that same assurance. Steve bowed his head a bit, trying to think how to continue. "I took the shield back, after that, became Captain America again and I faced down the Serpent and Skadi to avenge Bucky."

He reached out and drew the shield onto his lap, tracing the lines of Uru in the shield. "The Serpent shattered the shield into dozens of pieces. I was... low, then, Ian, with Bucky dead and the shield shattered, I don't think I was quite ready to... It was one of the hardest moments I ever had to get back up from."

"But you did," Ian whispered, voice too close to a question.

"I did." Steve took the moment to smile. "Iron Man returned from Svartalfheim with weapons to fight the Worthy, people all around the world started to pull together to make the best of the destruction around them, we turned the tide, we defeated the Worthy and Thor defeated Cul the Serpent." Today was not the day to mention Thor's death; Steve would bring it up if it ever seemed time to tell the next part of that story. "The power of the Worthy was defeated, Sin and the others fled."

Ian let out a sigh of relief and the breath he had been holding. "Bucky?"

"He lived," Steve answered grinning. "But I didn't know that at the time."

And then Ian laughed and grabbed Steve around the waist. "You can be a real jerk sometimes, Dad. The shield?"

"Ton-- Iron Man took it to Svartalfheim to be reforged. He told me that it's stronger than it ever was, and I agree." Steve ruffled his son's hair again and returned the hug. He didn't bother to patronize Ian with some complicated - or uncomplicated - moral, he... liked to think that the stories he told, that the things that he and his friends went through, had some sort of deeper meaning, and at least the story of the Serpent and the Worthy had that tone to it: Victory over fear.

They were probably dead, at least some of them. Steve tried not to think about that, even as he wondered which of the Young Avengers, or even new superheroes forged from difficult trials, would replace his fallen and retired comrades. The Avengers lived dangerous lives and fought powerful foes, Steve knew when he and Ian got home the world will have changed greatly. That was a fear he tried not to let seep into his heart.

Ian had finally grown tired, though, and he let himself be prodded into wasting the barest minimum of water scrubbing their dishes and their teeth before collapsing together on their pallet on the cold stone floor of the Cavern. Ian snuggled into Steve, his back to Steve's front, Steve's arms around his son.

Ian fell into sleep almost immediately, but Steve lingered in wakefulness, doubt and longing for home were strongest now, when he did not have his son to remind him of why Dimension Z had become tolerable. Getting home was still Steve's dream, waking and asleep, so that he could finally give his son a _life_ , a real one not taken over by anxiety and fear and always spent on the cusp of starvation. Steve remembered his own life at Ian's age, how every struggle seemed like it would be the one that would finally break him, but just like Steve had done, he owed it to Ian to push until he could bring his son out on the other side.

"I love you, Son."

Ian stirred, just enough that Steve thought he had likely heard. "You too, Dad."


End file.
